


Odd Little Family

by BubbleGumLizard



Series: Family [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Confused John, Established Relationship, Family Secrets, M/M, Mycroft IS the British Government, POV Third Person Limited
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 10:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10488888
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BubbleGumLizard/pseuds/BubbleGumLizard
Summary: John finally asks about Greg's wife...and gets a confusing answer.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is set shortly after S2E1. It's the introduction to a series of Mystrade fics I'm planning.

“Evening, mate!” John said, opening the door to let Greg Lestrade in.  It was their weekly sit-around-and-bitch-about-Sherlock night at Baker Street.  “I’m surprised you’re here tonight.”

“Oh?” Greg asked, opening the bottle of scotch he brought and pouring some out for each of them.

“Well, after what Sherlock said about your wife and the...PE teacher, was it?”  John was puzzled by Greg’s lack of anger about the situation.

Greg shrugged.  “Not Sherlock’s fault that he makes observations.”

“How does he know her, anyway?  And how did you meet him?  There must be a story there.”  John was suddenly very curious about the strange relationship between Greg and Sherlock.

“Sherlock hasn’t told you?”

John shook his head, not understanding the strange look on Greg’s face.  He should be much angrier about Sherlock, but he looked amused instead.

“Where is he, anyway?” Greg asked.

“Should be back any minute.  He’s meeting Mycroft.”  John made a face.

Greg chuckled.  “You’re not a fan of Mycroft, are you?”

“God, no,” John said.  “You’ve met him, haven’t you?  What a git.”

Greg just took a sip of his scotch and smacked his lips appreciatively.

“Are you going to answer me about how you met Sherlock?”

“Let’s wait until Sherlock gets home,” Greg suggested before turning the conversation to other topics.

A glass of scotch later and the door opened.  “Good evening, Sherlock,” Greg said with a smile.  Sherlock ignored him, going to his microscope and looking through it.

“Ah, Detective Inspector Lestrade,” a cool voice said and John groaned.  “And good evening to you, too, John.”

Greg turned and smiled at the doorway.  “Mycroft.  Nice to see you.  We were just talking about you, actually.”

“All nice things, I assume?” Mycroft walked over and picked up the bottle of scotch and made a sound of approval.  “My favorite.”

“Yes.  Oh, and John wanted me to tell him how I met Sherlock.”

There was something odd happening between Mycroft, Sherlock, and Greg, who were all sharing rather significant looks.  John definitely wasn’t in on the joke and he wasn’t sure he liked it.  “What is it?” John demanded, getting annoyed.

“Do you think it’s wise to discuss that situation?” Mycroft asked, with an affectation of boredom.

“I don’t think it’ll hurt anything.  We can trust John, can’t we?” Greg asked with a shrug.  “I thought he would know already.”

“I have more important things to talk about than you,” Sherlock snapped, but his heart didn’t seem in it.

“Right, then!” Greg said, standing up.  “In order to fully explain the situation, you should come to my house, John.  I’ll have to show you some things.”

John was frustrated with the conversation, so he agreed with minimal resistance, just wanting to know already.  They said goodbye to the Holmes brothers and caught a cab with only a little grumbling from John.

He noticed that they seemed to be going into a very nice neighborhood, far nicer than John would expect Greg to live in.  The house where they stopped was the smallest on the street, but it was still incredibly impressive.

“A bit posh for you, isn’t it?” John asked, too annoyed to care about rudeness.

Greg just laughed, paid the cabbie, and led the way inside.  He took John into the kitchen, where a very pretty blonde woman was washing dishes.  She turned and smiled at them, giving Greg a questioning look.   
“John, this is Karen,” Greg introduced them.

“Is this your wife?”

“I suppose I am,” Karen said.

“Oh, there’s a PE teacher now?” Greg asked her.

Karen blushed.  “Oh, yes.  The girls’ former teacher.  They got in about an hour ago, by the way.”

John couldn’t remember ever being so confused.  Just what kind of relationship did Greg have with his wife?

“You have to meet my girls,” Greg said suddenly, turning to John.  “You’ll love them.”

John assumed that Greg was talking about his daughters.  All he knew was that they were twins, were in university out of the city, and were rarely home, which he supposed was normal.

“They’re in the other house,” Karen said, turning back to her dishes.

“‘Other house’?” John echoed.  If anyone said anything else he didn’t understand, he was going to scream.

“I’ll show you,” Greg said, leading the way out of the kitchen.  He led John down a set of stairs into a cellar that looked like it was out of a renaissance period piece.  John didn’t say anything until they reached what appeared to be the end of a hallway and pulled on a wall sconce to open an honest-to-god  _ secret passage _ .

“What the hell is going on here?” John asked, stopping in his tracks.

Greg laughed again.  He was having way too much fun with this, John decided.  “Trust me, you’ll find out soon.  Let me have a bit of fun.”

John begrudgingly followed Greg through another cellar and up a set of stairs, into what was clearly a larger house.  They went into an impressive library, where two girls were sitting on a couch, books spread all around them.

“Da!” one of the girls said and they both jumped up to give him a hug.

John studied the girls as they greeted Greg.  One of them was a spitting image of Greg, the same easy, open smile and tanned skin.  The other one made John freeze.  She looked like  _ Sherlock _ .  She had the same eyes, dark hair, and pale skin.  She turned and smiled a greeting at John.

“I’m Kate,” she said, holding out her hand to shake John’s.

“I almost forgot John was here!” Greg said, turning and smiling at him.  “John, these are my daughters, Kate and Jen.”

Jen gasped.  “Oh, you’re John!  It’s so lovely to meet you.”

John didn’t say anything, afraid if he spoke he would ask if Greg was sure of his one daughter’s parentage which was perhaps the wrong thing to say when meeting a friend’s children.

“I brought John here, because Sherlock was having some fun at my expense and mentioned your mother dating a PE teacher.”

“They know Sherlock?” John asked carefully.

“Of course!” Kate said brightly.  Then she laughed, sounding like a clone of Sherlock.  It was starting to get a bit creepy, if John was being honest.  “I suppose they haven’t told you yet.”

“Told me  _ what? _ ”

“Ah, there you are,” Mycroft said, walking into the room with Sherlock.  “Good evening, girls.”

“Dad!” the girls shouted in unison, crowding around Mycroft and talking over each other excitedly.

John’s brain seemed to stop sending signals to the rest of his body.  He was frozen where he stood, utterly confused as he watched the scene in front of him.  It wasn’t any better when Karen appeared out of nowhere and greeted Mycroft with a smile.  The final straw was when Greg, smiling, took Mycroft by the hand and pulled him into an embrace, kissing him with the easiness of a comfortable, long-term relationship.

Sherlock caught John as he swayed, his head spinning.  “I believe this is when someone explains the situation,” Sherlock said as he steadied his friend with a comforting arm around his shoulders.

“You’re right.  I had my laugh, I’ll explain.  More scotch?” he asked.

John nodded, just deciding to play along.  He was sure another two or three parents of the girls would appear at any moment, with no explanation of course.

Sherlock steered John into a chair and disappeared with the girls, while Mycroft and Karen both excused themselves, claiming they had work to do.

“So,” Greg said eventually, handing John a glass of scotch.  “I’m not really married to Karen.”

“But you are married.”

Greg nodded.  “To Mycroft.”

“ _ Mycroft _ ?”  John had never considered Mycroft someone who would be married, especially not to a man like Greg, who was a perfectly normal bloke.

A faraway, romantic look came into Greg’s eyes.  “Twenty-two years last month.”

“And Karen is…?”

“My best friend since childhood.  The PE teacher Sherlock mentioned is a woman, not some man.  I’m no cuckold.”

“You’re not in a relationship with her at all?”

“No.  I swing both ways and she only swings one way, the wrong way to be interested in me.  She’s more a free spirit anyway, marriage isn’t for her.  My ‘wife troubles’ are part of the lie.”  He took a long drink of his scotch.

“And she’s the girls’ mother?”

“Yep.  I didn’t miss the effect they had on you.  I knew that was going to be good.”  Greg was smiling a smug smile that John wanted to punch off his face.  “Kate was the one that did it, huh?”

“Yeah, I -- she looks like…”

“Uncle Sherlock,” Greg helpfully supplied.  “Sherlock and Mycroft  _ are _ brothers.  It’s not strange that she might look like him.  Still annoys Mycroft, though.  Especially with Jen looking like me.”

“I thought they were twins, how is one clearly a Lestrade and one a Holmes?”

“Well, we hardly shagged Karen.  They made embryos in a lab and implanted them.  We were lucky, got one of each, one biologically mine and one biologically Mycroft’s.”  He smiled.  “Odd little family, aren’t we?”

“I just want to be clear.  You’re married to Mycroft, but pretend to be married to Karen.  Your daughters are a product of in vitro fertilization, using sperm from both you and Mycroft.  You and Karen pretend to live together in one house, which is attached to Mycroft’s house by a secret, underground tunnel.  You really live in Mycroft’s house and the girls live in both houses.  Sherlock is your brother-in-law.  And you’re married to  _ Mycroft _ ?”  John’s head was spinning from all of the information.

Greg nodded.  “That’s about it.”

“But why?  Why all the lies?”

It was clear that Greg was expecting the question and he sighed heavily, staring at the drink in his hands.  “The lie started because Mycroft was hoping to move up in his...organization and there were certain people who could have made him being married to a man a problem.  He was a field agent then and didn’t have the power he has now.”

“So Sherlock is right about Mycroft’s job?  He’s the British government, or whatever nonsense?”

“More or less.  This is an old family house that Mycroft moved into when he was young.  We bought the other house and built the tunnel so that it wouldn’t be obvious that I was spending so much time with him.  And when we were married, we asked Karen to help us.  She had no interest in marriage and we were willing to support her financially, so she said yes.  We had a fake wedding and moved her into ‘my’ house.  It’s been more or less her there alone all these years.  The girls spend time there with her, of course, but Mycroft and I always had full custody of them.”

“Why are you still lying?  There can’t be anyone to make difficulties for Mycroft now.”

Greg looked thoughtful for a moment.  “It’s safer for me and the girls.  Important people know, of course, in case something happens to any of us.  But I wouldn’t like to think of what might happen if the wrong people find out the girls are Mycroft’s.  It’s a small price to pay for their safety.”  The troubled look on his face made John feel for him.  Surely no one knew the sort of danger Mycroft must face more than his husband.  And to have the worry that the same danger might face your children?  John wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

“What’s it like to have Sherlock for a brother-in-law?” John asked, the thought suddenly hitting him.

“Worrisome, honestly.  Berk is always off almost getting himself killed.”

“You worry about him?”

Greg grinned.  “Of course.  Who do you think told Mycroft about you when you turned up at my crime scene?”

“You’re responsible for Mycroft kidnapping me?”

“If Sherlock were your brother, wouldn’t you want to check up on a new man who suddenly appeared with him?”

John had to admit to himself that Greg was right.  It was beyond odd to think of Sherlock and Greg being brothers, even brothers-in-law.  Not to mention how odd it had been to see Sherlock heading off with his nieces, listening to their chatter with a half-smile on his face.

“You should have seen him with them when they were kids,” Greg said, apparently reading John’s mind.

John suddenly had a mental image of a young Sherlock running around with two little girls, finally having companions who had as much energy as he did.  He smiled and leaned back.  “It’s nice that you have a family, Greg.  And Mycroft?  What’s he like as a husband?”

A dreamy look came over Greg’s face.  “He’s  _ wonderful. _ ”


End file.
